


The road to hell is not a one way ticket

by Zireael07



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Augmentations (Deus Ex), Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cyberpunk, Dark, Dismemberment, F/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23666335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zireael07/pseuds/Zireael07
Summary: What if augmentations and surgeries could bring someone back from the dead, if done quickly enough after the event? JC finds out, and not in a good way.The divergence happens some time before JC reaches Paris, although the story takes place in Paris itself.
Relationships: Gunther Hermann/Anna Navarre
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The road to hell is not a one way ticket

**Author's Note:**

> PAY ATTENTION TO THE TAGS please!

_Paris_  
JC Denton startled badly as the poor lighting shifted and revealed the state of the club. L'Porte d'Enfer, today, seemed deserving of its name - the walls singed and riddled with bullet marks, chairs shattered. Only the counter was more or less unscathed and the bartender cautiously poked his head out from behind.  
'She's gone. _Bien'_ he sighed in relief. 'Some mech madwoman was here last night, looking for you. Gave me the creeps. I said nothing-'  
Denton frowned. He was aware of Gunther Hermann dogging his footsteps for weeks now, but a woman? That was new...  
'What did she look like?'  
'Tall, thin, two red eyes. Scary good with a gun'  
The agent frowned some more. If not for the certain plural, the description would fit Anna Navarre, but there was a certain problem with that theory - Navarre was long dead by his own hand.  
As he exited the club, a glint of something caught his eye. A collection of LAMs on the wall of the other building, spaced like climbing handholds... evidently someone had used them to scale the wall. But wait.. why were they still there? Only a mech would have the dexterity to use them to that effect, and he would also have the dexterity to remove them as he went. That meant... whoever it was, was still around. He peered cautiously around, but could not see anything or anyone out of the ordinary. He shook himself - trust him to have some paranoia after everything that had happened - and walked off in his original direction.  
BAM!  
JC shook his head, disoriented. As his sight cleared, he realized he'd stepped on another LAM. He was mostly fine... a bit singed, but all in order, why were his internal alarms pinging? A dirty street kid stared up at him, his mouth open in a silent scream, and wordlessly pointed to Denton's side. He followed the urchin's gaze... only to realize his arm was missing, torn out by the force of the explosion. Thank fuck for the regeneration augmentation, then. He'd hole himself up somewhere for a couple of hours and it would be back then.  
He frowned as he stared at the shrapnel and blood on the pavement. For a moment there, he'd thought he saw a pair of red eyes glaring at him from the darkness. A LAM hidden on the street, where it could've blown up anyone? Hermann was far too honorable to risk innocents, even in his quest for revenge. Definitely didn't look like the German's modus operandi...

* * *

JC jumped suddenly as he thought he heard footsteps. He glanced around, trying to make out anything in the darkness of the cathedral roof. For a fraction of an instant, he thought he saw two red eyes - AGAIN - and then his ears caught low, deranged laughter - so low, that it was barely there. Keeping a tight grip on his gun, he crept forward... and then from behind, he heard footsteps again, and then in the corner of his eye, he saw something red. He whirled around - nothing. Some more steps ahead... and again, a glint of red, this time ahead of him. He jumped, only to be greeted by more quiet, manic laughter.  
A ping of an incoming infolink call almost made Denton jump out of his own skin - and the voice he heard was not anyone he would have expected.  
 _You are a small, prowling mouse. And dumb like a mouse. You keep coming, like you forget about Agent Navarre. I remember Agent Navarre. I remember for everyone._  
No sooner did Gunther Hermann's voice, heavy with a German accent, fade out into silence than he heard that low, barely-there, laughter again. He was surely going mad, seeing and hearing things that weren't there. There was no way he could have just seen and heard his former colleague - it was simply not possible!

* * *

JC breathed out slowly, his finger a milimeter away from squeezing the trigger of his gun. Gunther was scrambling to get up and pick up his flamethrower, but Denton knew there was no way he would be able to do so in time. He steeled himself again and steadied his aim. One clean shot - a kindness to the man who was once a colleague.  
A sudden sharp pain made him sway and roll to the side. Blood soaked his trenchcoat immediately, which meant the shot hit something vital. He cursed - and Hermann used the distraction to regain a hold on his own weapon. Denton's own shot went astray, and a moment later he heard a voice in his ear. A voice there was surely no way he was able to hear - he was certainly going mad.  
'Welcome to hell, Agent Denton' said a cool, familiar voice.  
Gunther Hermann's jaw went completely slack in shock at he stared at the person who just saved his life. Then he glanced up - Denton's gaze followed only to see a large cross on the cathedral's ceiling - and surreptitiously crossed himself with his free hand. That was a surprise, JC never pegged him as particularly religious - and then as he followed the man's wide-eyed stare, he suddenly had the same urge.  
Anna Navarre stood half a meter away, a malicious smile on her face. She held an assault gun in the same seemingly effortless way as she did when he'd last seen her, when escaping the hidden prison underneath UNATCO headquarters.  
'I believe it's going to be a one-way ticket for you, Denton' she said, cackling wildly, before letting loose a series of bullets.  
JC went down, surprised and helpless, laying in a pool of his own blood. His only hope was that the regeneration would kick in before he bled out, that the nanobots would be smart enough to focus on the wounds and not on the assorted burns Hermann's flamethrower had left. He could only stare up as Navarre approached him, to stand above him, each foot on a side of him, and then yelped as one of them connected with his abused, burnt flesh. From this up close, he could see her foot was a mangled mess of flesh, bone and metal, and that his eyesight did not deceive him - both of her eyes were now the same shade of red.  
'Poor little boy...' she laughed, the same demented laugh he'd heard as the LAM nearly blew him up outside L'Porte d'Enfer, the same laugh he'd heard on the roof. 'You thought you _killed_ me... but here I am...' and she laughed again.  
She was almost dancing in her delight, even more insane than she used to be. But there was no way she could have survived their fight at UNATCO, not with her killphrase active and not with the amount of new holes he'd opened up in her. Gunther slowly made his way in her direction, step by cautious step. He tentatively lifted his hand, almost as though he expected to meet empty air, and his face went chalk-white as it found solid flesh and metal. Anna turned her head to look at him, and for a moment she looked almost like the collected agent he used to know.  
'I'm not a ghost, Gunther' she said.  
JC noted her momentary distraction and forced himself to focus.  
'Flatlander woman' he forced out through numb lips.  
Nothing happened, except Navarre focusing on him again. She stared down the barrel at her latest victim, her lips slowly curling into a malicious smile again.  
'You can't kill what is already _dead_ , Denton. That is, I suspect, the last lesson of your pitiful life...'  
Anna lifted her hand and slowly unzipped her black vest. The rest of her body looked much like her feet, a horrific mess of both flesh and metal, like some demented surgeon putting a collection of puzzle pieces together, just not in the way they were originally supposed to be arranged. Where her heart used to be there was now something bulging - and visibly moving - under her skin. Something of the horror he felt must have shown on the agent's face, because Navarre cackled.  
'Feeling sorry, JC? Too _late_!' and she cackled again.  
She knelt next to him and slowly pulled out her combat knife.  
'Bad news for you, traitor... Death - at _your_ hand - has freed me from the oath of service. I am no longer _bound_ by the UNATCO rules and regulations-' and there, she grinned.  
If JC thought her previous smile was malicious.... it had nothing on this one. It promised pain and death. And he wasn't wrong, as he discovered moments later. Weakened as he was by both burns and blood loss, he was in no state to fight her augmented strength, and especially not when Hermann joined in. The German tore his gun out of his hand and tossed it far away, leaving him defenceless, before twisting his right arm so far back it hurt. Navarre grinned and shoved the point of her knife in the bullet wound she'd made. The pain made Denton twist and buck, but the man held fast and the only thing he'd succeeded in doing was hurting his arm even more. When Anna reached for his hand, he was dizzy with pain and did not immediately realize it was not an offer of help.  
A burst of white-hot pain that would have toppled Denton over if Hermann wasn't holding him up... it took him seconds to realize his hand was now gone, and An- Navarre was reaching towards his other arm. JC tried to fight, but all it took was Gunther's elbow in his side before he bent over, panting and winded and feeling as though he would puke - but he had nothing to puke out - and he nearly choked on air as he felt her knife cut through sinew and bone. He slumped over, nearly unconscious, but a vicious backhand across the face stopped him from slipping into the darkness.  
'That is but a fraction of the pain you inflicted on me. Death...' she paused ' _is_ very painful'  
Navarre shoved him back to the floor, occasionally kicking him to make sure he didn't lose consciousness.  
'Don't play with your food, Anna' Hermann chided from somewhere behind her. 'Just finish him off or I'll do it'  
Anna's red eyes blazed with an unearthly fury.  
'I want him to suffer! He killed me!'  
'You are not the only one to want revenge. Nor were you his only kill' Gunther pointed out.  
The woman cocked her head to the side, proving again that she was not some demon nor a lookalike, but a twisted version of the Agent Navarre he'd known.  
'The chief is dead, by his hand. Carter and Reyes left. UNATCO is nothing like you and I knew' Hermann clarified. 'In the past, they wouldn't have let me go alone on such a mission'  
'Mr Manderley is...?' Navarre nearly reeled back, before her eyes blazed again. 'YOU! You _ruined_ everything-'  
JC felt his jaw drop down.  
'What? The chief is...? I didn't- what reason would I-' he stuttered.  
Agent Hermann's large hand on her shoulder was the only thing stopping Anna from flying into a rage again.  
'The traitor is right... He would've had no reason to kill Mr Manderley, and I haven't known him to lie.'  
The woman kicked Denton again, just out of pure spite, and he moaned weakly. Gunther chuckled mercilessly.  
'Not enjoying your just desserts, are you, little mouse?' he asked.  
'Mouse?' Anna's mangled skin did something weird and it took the fallen man a moment to realize that normally, she would've lifted an eyebrow. 'Have you been so lonely that you tried to take this one as a pet?'  
'No' Hermann laughed 'He's a mouse and I- and you- are the cats'  
She grinned at that description and knelt down next to JC, twisting her knife in her fingers. 'Are you going to _squeak_ , mouse?'  
Denton didn't answer, figuring that in his state, it was better not to antagonize the madwoman. That, however, did nothing to deter her from squatting over him and slowly carving long lines along his legs. To his mounting horror, he realized that it was not her aim to kill him - or at least, not quickly. The distinctly German voice said something, and Navarre ignored his weak struggles, her knife continuing its path over his hips and to his abdomen. There, she pushed the knife deeper in, and JC realized that he hadn't known what real pain felt like, not at all.  
'Just kill him and be done with it' said Hermann, with a note of annoyance to his voice that said he was repeating himself.  
'Oh, he's going to _die_ , certainly...' Anna said, stepping away from her victim. Was it delirium or was there a note of satisfaction in her voice?  
Denton spotted his gun on the floor, and he tried to crawl surreptitiously closer to it, hoping to at least take out one of them. Something was dragging him down, excruciating pain in his belly with every movement, and then he'd apparently tripped some sort of a detection mechanism, as a holographic transmitter on the wall lit up. Even in his state, he recognized the man - Walton Simons. And so did the other two, judging by what he could hear, although most of the man's spiel passed him by in the state he was in.  
'- Next time we won't use an old box of bolts like Gunther. The only reason I let him go to Paris is that I was sick of his moaning about Navarre-' there, he'd blacked out for a moment, apparently '-he was the last of the mechs.'  
A fist went through the transmitter with enough force to shatter it and send sparks flying around. JC jerked his head up. It was not Hermann who'd put his fist through the image of Simons, it was Navarre - fury blazing in her red eyes. Gunther, behind her, did not look furious - just resigned and betrayed. For a moment, Denton thought the man might actually _cry_.  
Navarre turned around to face her partner. From his position on the floor, the fallen agent couldn't see her expression, and then she stepped closer to the German.  
'He is wrong. You are not a 'box of bolts' - nor are you the _last_ ' the woman sounded like she was seething.  
JC hadn't expected her to be outraged on Gunther's behalf. 'Not so heartless, are you?-' he managed to cough out 'Even though you're _literally_ so, now-'  
Anna hadn't done much except for stepping up to him, but the sudden reoccurrence of the horrific pain nearly made him black out. He glanced at her, almost curled into a ball as he was, and realized the crazy bitch was pulling his own guts out.  
'Keep quiet, little mouse, and maybe I'll let Hermann _put you down_...' she said.  
She stepped back, focusing her attention on the other man. Denton couldn't quite make out the words that were said. Through the pain-filled haze, he saw them standing so close Gunther could almost touch her - and he did so, his fingers running over the _thing_ that had replaced Navarre's heart, seemingly not repulsed at all.  
'It seems to be performing quite well' he said, his gaze focused on the minute pulses of the new augmentation.  
JC's arm managed to find something cool to the touch, and it took him a moment to realize it was his gun. Half-dead as he was, however, he realized he had no chances of taking either of them with him. He started running over his available options, dimly realizing that his regeneration was still working, keeping him alive, and then something startled him out of his planning. Hermann's fingers slowly tangled with Navarre's, and she made no move to jerk her hand back. She tilted her head, an almost curious move, and in the next moment, the man was bending down to her height. With mounting disbelief, Denton realized he was seeing the two mechs - machines literally _made_ for killing - _kiss_. In his state, he didn't know how much time passed before they broke apart, Anna touching her lip with her finger in a gesture that was reminiscent of a much younger girl.  
'You have no idea how long I've been waiting-' she said finally. 'I even considered making the first move, _years_ ago-'  
That was all it took for Gunther to pounce on her again, kissing her with all the pent-up fervor, as though he wanted to make up for the lost time. And Navarre kissed him back, as good as she got, even as the momentum sent them tumbling towards the nearest pillar, her mangled hands twisting in her partner's uniform jacket. The two paid absolutely zero attention to the dying man at their feet, their worlds' reduced to each other. Faintly embarrassed - even though neither was any longer his friend - JC looked away, only to notice something shiny tumbling out of Anna's pocket. Something red and blue and shiny, and it rolled towards him.  
With immense effort, Denton crawled up to the LAM, only metres away from his erstwhile colleagues. Trembling, his weak arm somehow managed to send it flying back towards the original owner - armed, this time. Pressing the switch on was automatic for the agent, after all, even though it took a lot of effort with both of his hands missing.  
After the blast, he was surprised to find himself still alive - he would've thought he was in range of the detonation. And then the smoke cleared and he realized he'd only succeeded in making his own situation even worse. Agent Navarre - or the twisted version of her that she now was - looked utterly _pissed_ , the vast majority of her clothes gone in the explosion. Otherwise, she looked mostly the same - still horrific, but seemingly unscathed. Gunther Hermann, behind her, clearly sustained some damage - evidenced by the bloody marks on his huge body and by the shrapnel embedded here or there, but was definitely not knocked out either.  
'Did little mouse try to bite?' Anna laughed madly. 'We could've played nicely, but you weren't interested, were you?'  
Two pairs of red eyes glared down at JC Denton, and then he felt a knife trail along his throat. He nearly crossed his eyes trying to peer at his tormentor, only to see Gunther instead of the woman. His large hand pressed the knife marginally closer, but then his partner was pulling his arm away.  
'Oh no, he doesn't deserve your- _mercy_ ' Navarre spat out the word. 'Just like he had none for me...'  
Hermann's hand tightened on the knife at the reminder of Anna's death, and he let her move his hand. The woman stood astride her victim, her foot pushing mercilessly on his opened stomach. She examined him critically, no doubt noticing where the regeneration started to kick in... and then she, slowly and methodically, carved those parts back open. Completely uncaring of her almost total nudity, Navarre turned around and carved another set of lines into his weakly struggling legs... then paused, and after a short deliberation, started sawing her knife into bone and sinew at the ankle. Mercifully, JC passed out.  
When Denton came to, there was almost nothing left of his legs. Anna Navarre had, piece by bloody piece, cut him up like the monster from hell she now was - his own doom, of his own making. And as she knelt in the slowly growing pool of his blood, she widened her stance to keep her balance better and he could see more of her than he ever wanted to. She made a couple more cuts and slowly dropped the knife. It clanged as it fell, but she paid it no attention, her red eyes glazed. Slowly, her hand moved to between her legs - not to cover herself, he realized a moment later, but to _slide her fingers in_.  
Something of his feelings must have shown on his face, because she laughed before crawling backwards away from him, her hand still where it was.  
'One more person who thought I was just a killing machine?' she snickered 'Little mouse was so wrong - maybe, in a different universe, it might have even found its way to my _bed_... but you missed your chance, traitor - and _freed_ me from the limitations of the regs'  
JC frowned, trying to follow the madwoman's line of thought even as his life slowly bled out of him. She'd turned her back on him and struggled to stand on unsteady legs - Hermann's arm shot forward to help her and she accepted the help, uncharacteristically. And then she stood on her tiptoes to kiss Gunther and the meaning behind her words became obvious. Denton could only stare as she pulled the taller man even closer and her mangled hands started working on his belt. For a moment, he'd hoped the crazy bitch would get rejected, as the German _gently_ moved her hands away... before undoing the belt himself. He swore when it caught on some of the shrapnel stuck in his hips, and yanked it out with a curse. The wound didn't bleed, at least not from what JC could see. Anna pressed her lips to it in an apparent _parody_ of caring, before she wrapped both of her hands around the visible bulge in Hermann's trousers.  
'Fuck... Anna-' he groaned, before trying to shove his own hands between her thighs, sending them both toppling to the floor.  
Pain and blood, and even the dying man on the floor next to them, didn't seem to matter. All he could hear was Navarre screaming herself hoarse, making it obvious she was not just a killer machine - and that she _enjoyed_ what was going on. As they rolled over, and before Denton could turn his head away, he realized why neither of them had any complaints about the pain. Anna's hands were digging into her lover's back like so much claws, leaving dark, bloody scratches, but Gunther didn't even flinch, just continued pounding wildly into her.  
The last thing JC heard was Hermann's accented voice, muttering _compliments_ about Navarre's body, and said woman's soft sighs. The mechs' twisted version of love, apparently, didn't pay any heed to the horrific state that Anna was left in by whoever brought her back from the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Two lines taken straight from the game.  
> L'Porte d'Enfer means the Gate(s) of Hell in French.  
> "might have found [the] way to my bed" is a reference to what one of the troopers says if you pick the violent path, something to the effect that "JC and Anna might make a cute couple"
> 
> As is the case with my other canon era fic, I find "blow up upon death" to make no sense in the universe.
> 
> "years ago", is, obviously, a veiled reference to my main canon-adjacent series (which did NOT happen in this universe)  
> The idea of Gunther surviving the fight and the transmitter ending up destroyed when he discovers how Simons betrayed him, is from a fic I read on FF.net - and from a different fic, the idea that mechs are made for killing and therefore unable to love.
> 
> The beginning (up to and including JC stepping on a LAM) comes from a dream I had today, and the rest was my muse churning out paragraphs at the rate of knots - this lil' baby just wrote itself xDDD And, errr, this was supposed to be just the fight, but then my shipping brain came on xDDD


End file.
